Planet Arduino

The NES was one of, if not, the first gaming consoles most of us ever experienced. That’s why we were all pretty excited to hear Nintendo’s recent plans of releasing the NES Classic Mini. As great as it sounds, though, turns out it won’t connect to the Internet and can’t play games beyond the 30 classics that come preloaded on the device. But leave it to a Maker to come up with a better solution! Enter DaftMike, who has built his own shrunken-down, 3D-printed version of the retro system complete with some of the features we all would’ve loved to see with Nintendo’s re-creation.

The DIY unit–which is 40% the size of the original–is powered by a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. It runs on RetroPie emulation software and uses itsy-bitsy NFC tagged cartridges, ranging from Super Mario Bros. to Zelda. When a cartridge is inserted into the machine’s fully-functional slot, an NFC reader scans it, selects that specific game from the Pi’s internal memory, and boots it up onto the screen.

I designed the connections between the Arduino and Pi to use the top 10 GPIO pins so I could mount the Arduino directly to the Raspberry Pi using a 2×5 header. All the electronics would then sit in the case behind the USB ports.

The NFC reader mounts underneath the cartridge tray connected to the Arduino with a piece of flat cable. There’s enough length on it for the case halves to be splayed apart if I need to dismantle the unit and the Arduino ‘lump’ unplugs from the Pi so I can update the ‘firmware.’

DaftMike even rounded out his incredibly-realistic design with a mini, Arduino Pro Micro-based controller–although probably a bit too small for adult hands. (Cool nevertheless!)

In terms of software, an Arduino sketch is used to read the NFC tags and manage the power switching, while a Python script running on the Raspberry Pi is tasked with launching the games. The two communicate over serial.

Those wishing to spark some childhood gaming nostalgia should check out Daftmike’s entire blog post, which provides a full rundown of the build and its inner workings.

For every pokemon you encounter on your adventure to become the world’s greatest trainer, you have about a 1 in 8000 chance of that pokemon being ‘shiny’, or a different color than normal. Put an uncommon event in any video game, and of course a few people will take that feature to the limits of practicality: [dekuNukem] created the Poke-O-Matic, a microcontroller-powered device that breeds and captures shiny pokemon.

We’ve seen [dekuNukem]‘s setup for automatically catching shiny pokemon before, but the previous version was extremely limited. It only worked with a fishing rod, so unless you want a ton of shiny Magikarp the earlier setup wasn’t extremely useful.

This version uses two microcontrollers – an Arduino Micro and a Teensy 3.0 – to greatly expand upon the previous build. Now, instead of just fishing, [dekuNukem]‘s project can automatically hatch eggs, search patches of grass for shiny pokemon, and also automatically naming these new shiny pokemon and depositing them in the in-game pokemon storage system.

The new and improved version works a lot like the older fishing-only automated pokemon finder; a few wires soldered on to the button contacts control the game. The Teensy 3.0 handles the data logging of all the captured pokemon with an SD card and RTC.

What did [dekuNukem] end up with for all his effort? A lot of shiny pokemon. More than enough to build a great team made entirely out of shinies.

Video below, with all the code available through a link in the description.

How to enhance performance in gaming from an engineering point of view? dekuNukem created a hands-free finder  built using Arduino Micro to accomplish the task of chaining fishes at full speed and without fail at a touch of a button:

The fishing keeps going without human input until a shiny shows up, at which point it stops and sound a buzzer to notify the user.

It took 81 chains to catch a shiny in this case, but during my other tests it’s usually around 50, and sometimes even less than 20 chains get you one.

Watch the detailed video below and check the code:

Released 25 years ago, the Nintendo Power Pad, a plastic mat that plugged into an NES, saw very limited success despite its prevalence in basements and attics. In total, only six games for the Power Pad were released in North America, and only 13 worldwide. The guys over at cyborgDino thought they should celebrate the sliver anniversary of the Power Pad by creating its 14th game, using an Arduino and a bit of playing around in Unity 3D.

The first order of business was to read the button inputs on the Power Pad. Like all NES peripherals, the Power Pad stores the state of its buttons in a shift register that can be easily read out with an Arduino. With a bit of help from the UnoJoy library, it was a relatively simple matter to make the Power Pad work as intended.

The video game cyborgDino created is called Axis. It’s a bit like a cross between Pong and a tower defense game; plant your feet on the right buttons, and a shield pops up, protecting your square in the middle of the screen from bouncing balls. It’s the 14th game ever created for the Power Pad, so that’s got to count for something.

Video of the game below.